Greece tries to bring the party to Copenhagen with "Rise Up" by Freaky Fortune featuring Riskykidd. Is this a winning track for the Eurovision Song Contest? Does it matter?
Just the other day I was thinking to myself how this year's Eurovision Song Contest didn't seem to have any of what I refer to as countdown songs. A countdown song is one where, as you listen, you can imagine the singer(s) in the studio watching a countdown clock as they work through their music sheets. The clock starts at three minutes—the maximum length of a Eurovision entry—and as the clock clicks down to 00:00:00, the song just stops. Having a "countdown clock" ending is not necessarily a mark of quality one way or the other: France's entry last year didn't fare too well, but Serbia's entry in 2012 finished in third place.
The countdown clock phenomenon causes the listener to consider the rest of the song. Is the time being used efficiently? Is the intro too long? Is the story of the song greater than the time allotted? Or is the song reaching an unnatural conclusion? Greece's entry "Rise Up" by Freaky Fortune feat. Riskykidd raises a number of these questions:
Hoo boy. It's ironic that a song titled "Rise Up" has no real buildup and remains more-or-less monotone throughout. Were there not a time limit, the monotony of the track could go on for another 16 bars or another 16 years. Although this is a dance track, the beat is so generic that it is tough to get excited. Compound that with the fact rap and rap-adjacent vocals are an incredibly tough sell at the Contest.
However, this is Greece. The country has never missed a final and, except for 2012, has not missed the Top 10 since the semi-final system was introduced.((That includes their 2011 entry "Watch My Dance," which I still dislike to a degree far greater than "Rise Up.")) If the EBU is ever going to reconsider the Big 5 system, Greece could conceivably be a contender for auto-qualifying simply to make the semi-finals more competitive. However, there's no reason to prescribe ways to improve the song: there's too much work required for an outcome that is probably a foregone conclusion.